Night of the Living Trekkies
Star Trek: like it or loathe it, you just can’t escape it.
I have to admit my relationship with Star Trek is a bit of a strange one. Growing up in the 1990s in a house where my mother was something of an obsessive, I have to say I’d definitely fall into the latter of the two Star Trek camps. As much as I find Gene Roddenberry’s ‘politics in space’ tedious, and if I’m honest, unimaginative, there really can be no denying the show’s mass appeal and its place in the public consciousness.
Given my natural disinclination for the Star Trek franchise, it might come as a surprise to you then that Night of the Living Trekkies isn’t all that bad.
Set for the most part in a small hotel in downtown Houston, NotLT takes an unofficial, humorous spin on the life of a Star Trek fan, and that great pinnacle of all geekiness, the Star Trek convention.
Oh… and did I mention that there are zombies?
Yes it seems Quirk books can’t quite get away from the whole zombie thing, but unlike Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, NotLT is actually a fair attempt at an original and funny book.
Where NotLT could have quite easily fallen into the trap of overdoing the whole Star Trek thing, and so disillusioning a large portion of its potential market, I have to say I didn’t at any point feel ‘overburdened’ with Star Trek geekiness. In fact, the whole Star Trek thing is handled quite well. There are certainly plenty of references to obscure Star Trek facts, but at the same time there are also plenty of jokes about modern culture — jokes you don’t have to be a Star Trek die-hard to appreciate.
So ok, there isn’t really anything particularly outstanding about NotLT, but I don’t think that really matters. It’s not overly original, or indeed overly funny, but what it does it does to a good standard, and operates very much as a ‘nuts and bolts’ sort of quirky horror-humour novel; the sort of thing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies really should have been!
